It has been two months since my last post. In that time we have added roughly 30 new members. I asked two of our long standing members in timezones that I don't play in if they would be interested in assisting with recruitment. I think these numbers are showing that this has been paying dividends. Even though I am able to spend a good amount of time in game throughout the day, nothing compares to having active players in those timezones chatting with prospective members.

As a result of this influx, corp activity has been up. It is great to see so many players both Omega and Alpha excited about EVE. As a result of our recruitment, we are, of cousre, dealing with many players new to wormhole space which has always been a part of the corporation that I have loved. As important as it is to be good at what you do, it has always been more important to me to try to be a place where people can get into being active in wormhole space perhaps without some of the added pressure that some groups have to be good all the time.

Invariably, our new members ask "what do I do now?" I figured this was a good opportunity to answer that question in long form hopefully to benefit them and anyone else looking at wormhole space. To be fair, this comes from the perspective of how I run our corporation. As we were once dubbed we are "not good at much...but they fucking try". We accept that our culture causes us to be inefficient at PvP or perhaps more of a target than a combatant at times. It is, however, our ability to choose fun over drama and to embrace those limitations as part of our identity that, I think, makes us a corporation that creates long term relationships which, ultimately, is the strongest draw of EVE, the social game.

Wormholes 101 or WTF do I do now?

As our recruitment informtion says, we liken ourselves Combat Explorers. Not full time, rage rolling, max efficiency PvPers, but more casual explorers with teeth if not claws at times. To that end, we discourage large scale PvE in our chain. It fundamentally works counter to exploration and PvP. Members are not, however, discouraged from engaging in PvE in combat capable ships or using PvE to generate content. But as far as a primary ISK making activity, our members are encouraged to seek exploration content as well as the lucrative gas mining and PI activities available in wormhole space.

​Exploration in wormhole space generally consists of searching low-class (class 1 through class 3) space for pirate data and relic sites with relic sites being the more consistently lucrative of the two. Pirate sites will have the name of a pirate faction in them such as Serpentis or Blood Raider. These are direct transplants of the same sites as found in null-sec to wormhole space and have no NPC "rats" to fight. This makes it an ideal location for even the most beginner explorer. Loot will range from 10-75M in a Relic site typically and Data sites are usually all or nothing affairs with more instances of nothing, much to our frustration.

I will often recommend to players to have one frigate for scanning equipped with as many scanning upgrades as you can fit on the ship given your skills and then have a second ship dedicated to hacking relics and perhaps another dedicated to data sites. I always make it a point to scan down data sites, despite their lower value, because Ghost Sites, which are very lucrative in wormhole space, are classified as data sites. Using a dedicated ship, while slightly less convenient does increase your chances of success while also speeding up your general scouting/scanning by using a ship dedicated to that activity as well.

Sleeper data and relic sites, also found in all areas of wormhole space, are essentially combat sites. The cans contain entirely different loot than pirate sites and is mostly worthless relative to the difficulty to access them by having to first clear all the NPCs. While some groups will clear the cans as a matter of course, it is not what we would recommend as it involves first engaging in a time consuming PvE activity followed by hacking for minimal value. There is some cherry picking of those sites that can be lucrative but that falls into the PvE area I described above and is for more advanced pilots.

​Gas mining is another low investment but high dividend activity if you don't mind staring at your screen for 15 minutes at a time (or longer depending). It is great to perform on an alt or second account if available while doing other things on a main. The 15 minutes comes into play because all gas (and ore) sites in wormhole space will spawn sleepers roughly 15-20 minutes after they are warped to by anyone after spawning. This gives a small amount of time to freely extract the resources before having to deal with NPC ships. For the most lucrative gas in Class 5 or Class 6 space, this may be all the time you have because those NPCs require a small fleet to clear usually. For lower class sites, you may return in a capable cruiser or similar ship to kill the NPCs and then continue your gas harvesting. Either way, given the low cost of a venture (roughly 5M or so) and the potential value of your 15 minutes of harvesting, the activity pays for itself very quickly and the gas is plentiful in most wormholes.

The third activity we recommend is Planetary Interaction. We have an internal resource that covers the basics of how PI works as well as there being many great resources online covering the same. PI is especially valuable currently with Citadels and other structures using PI in large quantities in their construction. If you can handle the click-fest nature of the PI interface, it can be excellent passive income that scales well across multiple characters and accounts. Unfortunately, it is not an option for our Alpha brothers and sisters.

Wormhole space does require that you have a certain love for scanning, for searching your environment for the next connection, the next site, the next target. Your content will not be spoon-fed to you but something you seek out. Keep this in mind as a new player to wormhole space as it is very different than other areas of EVE. Corporation sizes are smaller and thus you are the content generator, not someone else. The environment changes from day to day and hour to hour so what you do will have to adjust accordingly. If that appeals to you, then you should do fine in wormhole space.

I feel sometimes that I spend more time holding my breath waiting for the next thing in EVE than embracing there here and now. Over a year ago, it was Citadels followed by a long period of waiting for the right time for our corporation to anchor ours. Then it was Engineering Complexes (since I do a fair amount of industry on alt characters). Now it is EVE Vegas followed quickly by Alpha Clones, Ascension, and all that the new expansion will bring. I am still excited though for what is on the horizon. The new structures are fixing long standing problem areas in the game. The day of retiring POSes and Outposts cannot come soon enough so we can fully embrace a "new structure" EVE. The Alpha clone influx may be a flash in the pan or it may be a tidal wave of new players the likes of which I have never seen in EVE in my few years of play. Either way, as a wormhole player and CEO, I have to consider how best to integrate these new players into our environment.

Wormhole space relies heavily on cloaking. The lack of local means that while cloaked, you are completely invisible and undetectable to another player. Because of this mechanic, the "no talking in local" is a serious mantra for wormhole players and the entire environment is built around the idea that you remain cloaked as much as possible unless you are just about to drop the hammer on someone. Of course, non cloaky ships are used but typically for utility purposes. Even the dscan immune recons are popular precisely because you can hide your presence from anyone else providing essential surprise engagements.

Alpha clones have no ability to cloak or fly recons.

For an Alpha clone player that loves wormhole life but has no means or desire to be an Omega or pay for EVE, their wormhole existence will never be one built around being cloaked. The will never ever have this ability. They cannot plan their fits around it, cannot expect to surprise anyone while in a system, or engage in the same kind of activities that normal wormhole residents take for granted. Their EVE does not include this existing reality of how they exist in wormhole space. The question then becomes, how do you integrate these players into a wormhole corporation.

I think the obvious mechanism is for Alpha clones to be scouts and chain mappers providing intel and initial tackle for other Alphas and Omegas to descend upon targets. You won't find Alpha clones sneaking up on PvE ships. Alphas will undoubtedly be the bait or the target in their uncloaked ships as they scout and map wormhole chains. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. The prepared corporation with standing fleets and backup on the ready can take advantage of these ambushes. For many though, this brazen uncloaked scouting could mean the difference between a PvE gank and not if they alpha clone spooks the target. For many corporations, this may be too much of a sacrifice to want to include Alpha clones. For our own purposes, this fits well in line with our recruitment message of "Combat Exploration" where I have strongly desired our corporation to be one that looks for PvP through exploration, even going so far as to encourage exploration site running in combat ready ships (and not just a covops or Astero). If this means we miss a few "ratters" in favor of finding more PvP oriented engagements, I think I am OK with that trade-off.

No one, however, simply wants to be the snack that someone else eats. An Alpha player would certainly get frustrated if they are constantly being probed down and killed or ambushed while traversing wormholes. I've come up with fits for each race that I think achieve the goal of providing a difficult to scan ship that still provides scanning bonuses to Alpha clones who already are disadvantaged by their limited scanning skills while still having a bit of combat capability.

Not a particularly difficult fit to construct, but with a sensor strength greater than signature, it is very difficult to probe down. The well skilled Alpha will have a 3.3s align time which, while again, not perfect, is very agile for getting off a wormhole and into deeper space. They can even provide a reasonable 83 paper DPS plus neut capabilities if ambushed. It has plenty of fitting to replace the Rangefinding Array with a warp disruptor or scrambler if holding tackle is desirable. While this one is Gallente, it works just as well for the other races with minor modifications.

We've already encountered a couple characters in our recruitment who are either on a trial or an existing account ready to switch to Alpha on November 8th. This is a brave new world of EVE we are entering and I hope, as a corporation, we can be prepared to embrace it.

It has been a while and I have missed you. No, not you. The rest of you though.

Our summer, like clockwork, was very quiet even with our newly anchored Citadels providing us an opportunity to recruit again. For my own part, I had lost some of the fire for logging in and spent what little time I had in keeping my industry alts going. During the summer, I generally have less time to play since my gaming time comes at the end of the day after most of my house has gone to bed. With school out and everyone sleeping in, that time was crunched as everyone stayed up later than I cared to, having to get up for work the next day. Then towards the end of summer, No Man's Sky hit my PC and while it provided me some good single player fun and a reason to upgrade the video card in my PC, it also took away what little time I had for playing EVE. But, like most other games, it did not hold my interest like EVE does and with school starting and my evenings back, I'm getting back into the swing of things as are others in the corp.

So it happened that a few of us had decided to log on late last Friday night and see what trouble we could get into. Being the holiday weekend, I had off work early and had some afternoon time to take care of some EVE busyworking including hauling some fuel after scouting our connections. There was a decent high-sec connection via our C5 static but we had a C2 roll into us which ejected members of Jaded., a corp we had encountered before and known for PvP. Being just myself and I think one other pilot, I used an alt to observe their connection but otherwise left them be. It wasn't long, however, before a number of them were streaming into our hole and headed for one of our moons. It turned out that one of our friends, in our alliance, whose corp was a personal corp for his characters, had his POS tower go offline. We hadn't seen him in game most of the summer so it was no surprise. I was a little surprised though when the killboard lit up with about 6B ISK worth of stuff. I had assumed he had moved out all his gear into our Citadels but apparently not. Good day for Jaded. though.

The evening wore on and as it was drawing near the time for us to gather, reports were been fed from those logged on before me that Jaded. was still active, no surprise given their size and disposition, but doing things in a decent sized fleet (12 man) in another hole off their home. Our discussion turned to how we might be able to engage them in some way with our smaller 3 or 4 guys or somehow get a good fight out of them. I remarked that earlier in the day after the tower destruction, I had tried to catch a random daytripper on the C5 in my interdictor and also ended up taking a shot at a Jaded. scout who happened to also pass through immediately after. Jaded.'s response was quick with 4 or 5 T3TD. I suspected that if we could find a similar target, we might get a similar response which would be a decent engagement.

Not long after though, that Jaded. fleet came back into their home and then into our hole. It was nearing the time of our Citadel vulnerability and it seemed obvious what was going to happen next. It was go time.

Star House 2: Electric Boogaloo was under attack

One of our other members was already in the citadel and started firing some bombs at the fleet which was composed of about 8 Oracles and Nagas plus 3 logistics Basilisks and I believe one Rapier. Definitely not something we were about to engage with our 3 or 4 guys but I was excited to put our Astrahus to the test. I took over control but the first thing that I noticed was that our bomb launcher was cycling red and could not fire. Definitely some kind of bug, probably related to taking control from the other player, but I didn't feel I had time to mess around with it so I started to engage the fleet.

For those not familiar with Citadels, we basically have five options for weapons:

Missiles

Bombs

Neuts

ECM

Fighters

There are also webs and target painters

Missiles have two varieties, subcap and capital. We only need subcap because we are in C4 space. Subcap missiles have different sizes depending on their target. Large for battleship, medium for cruisers, and small for frigates. Here, I think I had the right type loaded for our opponents but as you'll see below, who knows.

Neuts and ECM and straightforward though as I'm writing this I realize that I had not been using the proper scripts in our ECM during the fight. I completely forgot about them until now. Elite PvPer here, folks.

There is a lot of variety in fighters between light and support but we had basic light combat fighters loaded so in this fight, it was simple.

I knew that taking care of the logistics ships was going to be a priority. I locked them up and jammed two of them. This should have had the effect of disabling their cap chains and putting their third logistics ship at risk when DPS was applied as they would not be able to effectively repair him. I launched fighters, though I struggled with the interface for a couple minutes early in the fight, and then put the missile DPS on the third Basilisk as well. It wasn't long before he was visibly taking damage and not being repaired enough and warped off. He was quickly followed by the other two leaving only the DPS ships on the field. Now I could focus my fire on them, as they lacked any kind of repairs. Being probably fit for DPS, they started to burn down quickly and they also warped off. Here it was obvious that the tackle mechanic on the Citadel was not working as expected and I had no scramble module on the citadel and could not change the fit now anyways.

So began our dance. Me shooting logi then DPS. Them warping in and out and killing my fighters. Corpmates helped by hauling fighters from our other Citadel over so I could keep up the pressure. In between warp ins and warp outs, our repair timer was slowly ticking down to zero from the 15 minutes it starts with. They eventually tried to bring a fourth logi but by then I had released control and retaken control of the citadel to get our bomb launcher working.

Void bombs from a Citadel are massively effective. 4,000 GJ every 20 seconds in a 40km radius (80km sphere). That is equivalent to about 200GJ/s drained to every ship in the range of the bomb. This is twice as effective as the single Neut we had on the citadel without costing any cap. Once we got this online, the Oracles and Basilisks were powerless to either shoot or repair with their cap drained. With the repair timer winding down, this was the end of the fight and they retreated having lost no ships but giving us a great fight and test of our Citadel's capabilities.

There have been a lot of complaints about Citadels, especially the medium Astrahus, being too weak and ineffective especially against subcaps. After this fight, I don't think this is the case necessarily, at least for wormhole space where we have the bomb launcher. I can see ways that the Jaded. fleet could have been more effective. I'm sure the exercise was a good test for them as well. Afterwards we were also able to discuss was that our small 3 or 4 men could have contributed to the defense without being slaughtered by the fleet. Citadel combat is a very interesting new part of our game and it was very exciting to be able to engage in and not completely fall on our face.

The above is a bit from Jerry Seinfield which I often find myself quoting when something is complete. "We have it now". Such is the case with our Citadels in our home. In fact, we have two.

Our second attempt to anchor a Citadel went quite uneventfully. No frigate holes this time. No random inbound wormholes either. I chose to anchor two because why the hell not. Bob rewards the bold and he did not fail to provide. Thus ended our year long self imposed hiatus on recruiting in order to keep opsec and our Citadel anchoring plan to a trusted group of players. It has been a long road that I am glad is over. To celebrate, we started recruiting and have been adding players daily interested in our brand of wormhole life.

Interestingly, it was a video of a TED talk that my wife showed me because of some non-EVE related event that really got me thinking what that brand of wormhole life was. In the video, the speaker outlines that the "Why" you do something, as a leader, is the thing that inspires people to follow you, not the "What" or the "How". As I have mentioned many times in this blog before, Star Explorers has simply been a corporation existing to be a place for people that perhaps enjoyed playing EVE the way that I enjoy playing EVE. One where real life often intrudes and we can play without concern for required operations or specific playstyles. It worked, to a point. The core members that got our Citadels online are a great group of players that I thoroughly enjoy playing this game with. But, I had a desire for something beyond that. The time had come, not to try to turn into yet another wormhole corp doing XYZ, but to find a unique message about why we existed that fit well with the original corp culture that had developed.

Thus was born: Combat Exploration

​Combat Exploration, quite simply, is a combination of my desire for exploration and for PvP. It is, in essence, how I have been playing solo for quite some time now. I explore our chain, find relic exploration sites and look for targets to engage. Personally, I fly a Stratios but I know that not everyone can either fly such a ship or afford to fly such a ship. Since we have also been a corp that does not turn away new players, our Combat Exploration focus had to include those players.

Combat Exploration then is the use of non-traditional ships such as Assault Frigates, T3 Tactical Destroyers, and other supporting ships in a fleet to scan a wormhole chain, raid exploration sites, and take the fights that come with being bold and uncloaked in wormhole space. It seems quite fun to me to take a fleet of Enyo's out, warp to and hack Relic sites and engage any hostiles that wish to make a target of us. The ships are cheap, they can fit anywhere in wormhole space, and they are capable enough to do hacking and combat without sacrificing too much of either professional while still being effective. At least, that is the idea. Regardless of the outcome, it should be a great deal of fun.

As a core of the corporation, it is the activity I wish to promote above all others. It does not require experience at running fleets. With my own limited playtime, it also isn't feasible that I alone will lead this charge. This simply requires a desire to get a small group of people together, scan the chain, run sites, and take fights. The outcome isn't as important as being out there and engaging in whatever comes your way. It is far preferable to me than huffing gas, mindlessly shooting sleepers, or any other activity that doesn't promote corporation cooperation but simply makes you a target for someone else's activity.

I never had a name for it before, but Combat Exploration is how I have been playing EVE for quite some time now and if you are looking for something similar, check out our recruitment thread and drop by.

William Drayman of The Blastard Tales wrote today about CCP's removal of the daily/recurring opportunities system. The announcement came with the explanation that the feature was intended primarily as a data gathering exercise for how "daily rewards might effect and improve engagement in EVE." The conclusions CCP Rise came to was that the dailies did not have a significant effect on player activity. It did, as you would expect, result in an uptick of NPC kills. It did also result in an uptick in people killing those people. But it did not have a meaningful change in player activity. We can attempt to draw some conclusions from this:

People that were already logging in and killing NPCs received the reward

People that were already logging in may have additionally killed an NPC but otherwise did not change their behavior

People that were not already logging in were not enticed to log on or did so only to collect the reward and then logged off, essentially not changing their behavior or more specifically, their activity level on that character.

Of course, the forums filled with "I told you so" replies denouncing the feature altogether though there was a strong response from those who it probably helped the most, newer players or those who deal with them regularly such as Pandemic Horde. William's response in his blog though was hostile towards CCPs treatment of PvE saying that CCP was focused on how to force people to log on and not how to make PvE fun and more importantly, for catering to "mentally unwell people who wish to take their disturbed frustrations out on fellow players and harvest tears"

This attitude of attributing an anti-PvE stance to CCP falls very much in line with Neville Smit's 85% "movement" accusing CCP of ignoring the 85% of users that play in high-sec. However, in recent releases we have seen:

New dual exploration modules used in PvE exploration

Pirate Capital NPCs in null-sec PvE sites

Entirely re-balanced capital ships often used for PvE

Drifter boosters built from Drifter PvE sites

Project discovery and associated rewards

Multiple special PvE events (The Hunt, etc)

And those are just some of the changes this year. While I'm sure William is not unaware of these changes, the argument here is probably that none of those was substantial or content enough to make things significantly better. Ironically, there isn't much to list in terms of changes that aren't PvE related other than Citadels. To say that CCP is not creating or targeting content to PvE players is, in my opinion, baseless. In addition, behind the changes above, including Citadels, is a wide range of module changes, new modules and structures added to the game that have opened up many new opportunities for industrialists.

Unfortunately, William and many of those complaining about the daily opportunity trial or, by extension, CCPs lack of insight or attention sound, quite simply, bitter. Bitter about their own lack of interest in the game for whatever reason. Instead, they miss that CCP is once again introducing a series of PvE related content with the special event starting next week. They miss that the point of the daily reward trial balloon was specifically used to determine if players, who claim many things, would actually respond to implementing a feature that exists in the other games that William claims everyone is off playing instead of playing EVE. The result...players didn't respond. New players enjoyed the reward for the activity they were already doing but the activity itself did not entice players to engage differently. I hope that CCP finds that the special events or the Tribute system with its longer form of activities are the kind of content that gets people involved. I personally have had a definite "distaste" for PvE recently, at least the kind of PvE I was doing. Instead I have ventured to try new things in EVE. Industry has been very successful. I enjoy my wormhole space exploration which is an extension of my looking for PvP activity as well. It is especially disappointing that William paints PvP content with the mentally deficient brush. It betrays an obvious bias against any other playstyle and is further amplified by his discussion of null-sec changes.

William's additional argument about FozzieSov killing "safe space" is as much disappointing as it is myopic. Your space is as safe as you make it. I find it hard to argue with people that want theme park, no risk content in EVE. He talks about the game being niche. That niche is a game that does not spoon feed you content in most cases. Even the supposed safety of high-sec is an illusion created by those that view CONCORD as protection and not retaliation. To wish that EVE provided, or to lament the loss of "safe space" because sovereignty changes promote active use and defense of the space you own, is wishing for an EVE that chafes against some of the core game principles of a player operated sandbox.

EVE is changing and there is no doubt about that. However, underneath the complaints of bitter veterans who find the change unwelcome has been another voice heard that had significant fun recently as the entire landscape of null-sec changed with the crumbling of the CFC. Groups who are using Citadels such as Hard Knocks to break new ground in wormhole space previously un-thought of. The changes can be painful, as we have found ourselves in our attempts to build our own Citadel, but unlike those who are choosing to log off or otherwise disconnect from EVE, I am choosing to embrace the opportunities it provides to see this through to the exciting unknown waiting on the other side.

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